


the ragged edge of the universe

by Victorian_Asylum



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mentions of Pricefield, Mentions of Unreality, Physical Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 13:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4062328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Victorian_Asylum/pseuds/Victorian_Asylum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>what do you do with a sad girl?</p>
<p>(you drown her, you drown her)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ragged edge of the universe

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry

Chloe is angry and coming down from a high and hurting and she wants to go home.

Not home-home. That place is haunted and dead and she is going to lose herself if she has to spend another minute there with that animal. No. Home. The elusive idea, more of a feeling, of a safe place where she can belong, but it always exists just out of her reach and she can never run far enough or fast enough to hold onto that dream. It's too expensive and too imaginary and too damn far away and she can't find the right numbers to crunch to make it work. And fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why can't it work? What can she give this wretched world so that it will allow her some kind of asylum from her demons? She has nothing. Less than nothing. She'd sell her soul if she hadn't already pawned it for some coke and a few packs of cigarettes.

It isn't hard to pick the locks of Blackwell's dorms. Security is lax, and icy rain is coming down with high winds and thunder that rattles the windows and walls. Chloe can hardly see shit which means no one can see her. She's hasn't been in the  dorms in a good long while and has never been to Max's. But it's easy enough to find (fuckin’ loser wrote her name on her whiteboard). Chloe is tempted to write something obscene, but she doesn't have a sharpie and isn't coherent enough for shit like that.

At least Max's door isn't locked. Chloe goes in as quiet as she can manage, before she gives up, slips off her hat and wrings the water over Max's face. There isn't any screaming, thankfully, just swearing and flailing limbs. Max foot catches Chloe's thigh before she sits up violently, looking thoroughly pissed and confused. Her face is dripping and she blinks the water out of her eyes. She throws on the light, and says, or rather, hisses, "Chloe? What the fuck!"

Chloe holds her thigh, more for effect, because with drugs in her veins she can hardly feel anything and it's kind of wonderful in all the worst ways. It's definitely gonna be a bruise come morning. "Your reflexes are shit, Max Attack."

Max looks at her, angry and confused as hell, unsure of how to react. Her face contorts. She opens her mouth to speak something, changes her mind mid way, then says, "It's 2 in the morning! We're in the middle of a flood warning. What the hell are you doing here?"

Chloe is dripping water all over the floor and her socks are making God awful squelching noises in her boots. All in all she is freezing and her cheek is still smarting and she walked all this way because she isn't dumb enough to drive and everything is horrible. Aren’t these supposed to be the best years of her life? "Oh, y'know, I was in the neighborhood. Thought I'd stop by. Forgot my house warming gift."

Max looks at her like she's crazy (she is), full of disbelief and sleep, not anywhere close to awake enough to deal with this. She rubs at her eyes, shakes her head, and nods toward her closet. "You look like a drowned cat and you're getting water all over my floor."

"Want me to go stand on your plant instead?" Chloe asks, ridding herself of boots and jacket and socks.

"Lisa demands the purest forms of hydration."

"Ouch. That really hurts. Good to know how you think of me." She shucks her shirt and jeans and throws them onto the soggy pile she has started.

"Honesty is a pretty solid policy."  

“Your naivety kills me sometimes. You’re too precious.” Chloe shimmies out of her underwear. She's not self conscious. It's her body. It's a body. Bones and sinew, marrow and tar, muscles and drugs. She is used to its creaks and pops and grinding and groans, every jutting vertebrae and rib. She has gotten over a lot in the past few years. Grown older and rougher. But not nearly old and rough enough to function. Her callouses cannot block everything. "You know, I never imagined you'd want to get me out of my clothes so bad. But I'm down for it." There isn't a verbal response, just a choking sound that makes Chloe laugh. At least some things don’t change. Max's wardrobe is small and repeating and she wears a smaller size but Chloe is thinner and bonier so at least it kinda fits.

When she is decent enough to not make it entirely weird, she gives a little jump and flops into bed beside Max, pressed up against the wall and all those photos that make her heart swell. At least Max is making something of her life. She rolls, throws her arms and legs over Max. In her youth, Chloe's growth spurts made her gangly and awkward and too unwieldy in her skin. But somewhere inside her teens she grew into a sort of lanky and lean type of person, more hollow than anything, but her bones fit like they were supposed to. So, small graces.

"Gross. You are fucking wet and cold as hell," Max protests. "You feel like a fish."

"Love you too, dearest."

Max pulls her comforter up over them both, which Chloe is grateful for. She has always been a cuddler of sorts, liked to spread out towards the nearest port of warmth, and she craves human contact even more when she is lonely and mad and high. Chloe puts her face in Max's neck, feels her shiver and gasp and it is way too shitty of a day to delight in that. Her heart is heavy and racing and she has never wanted out of this town more than she has now. At least Max is warm and familiar and won't kick her out even though Chloe's been an all around shitty person. It's almost like the sleepovers they had when they were kids. Except they're bigger and sadder and have more weight on their shoulders. And nothing turned out like it was supposed, and somewhere along the way, all the pirates were lost at sea.

Max falls asleep soon enough and she doesn't ask about the bruise on Chloe's cheek or her dilated eyes or why she looks like she's coming undone. Chloe is awake and alive and she shuts off the lights and listens to the wind and the rain. It's silly and selfish because she almost wishes that someone would hear her when she says, "My life is falling apart."

///

Rachel once told her she drank like a soldier about to receive an amputation.

Which is a bold faced lie, as she has come to figure. She drinks to amputate, to flood the little bits of her mind that need to be drowned and refuse to stay quiet through drugs and sleep and cigarettes. Chloe wants to cut and dislocate and lobotomize her brain. Just take it out and lock it in a box under the seat of her rusty car until she can figure out if she even wants to live anymore.

She tries not to think about Rachel, because this voice in the base of her skull tells her that the first person she ever selflessly loved is dead and that feels like a spinal tap and then some.

Chloe is losing her mind. She is losing herself. Her bone marrow is being plucked from her body.

She wants to go back but she can't. Nothing will ever be the same and she has made her choices.

/// 

Debt isn't something someone her age should know. Not debt like this. Student debt, yeah, because fuck, the system is so fucked up.

But she has sold pieces and parts of herself just to survive and the interest alone is enough to swallow someone whole. Chloe does horrible things in order to live long enough to decide if she wants to live at all. Her actions have consequences and there is no such thing as a patient man. She gets a warning that leaves her bruised and bloody and broken and lying in the dirt holding her wounds. The message is clear: pay up. She doesn't have long and she knows she shouldn't have borrowed that money, but when has Chloe Price ever made a good decision. Every sensible person in her life either died or left. She was just the byproduct of a hurricane and house fire, she is the aftermath. Just parts of once whole beings all glued together, she doesn't remember how to function like an average person anymore.

It's been a good few hours that she has had her face pressed in the dirt. Her phone has rung twice and the sun has risen and fallen in the sky. Carefully, painfully, she eases her arm out from under her and retrieves her phone. The screen is cracked (of-fucking-course), but she can at least see what she's doing. She pulls up Max's number and puts it on speaker phone, laying it in the dirt.

Max picks up the second ring and says, "Where have you been all this time? You haven't shown up and made me do anything stupid all day. I was getting a little worried."

Max is always worried, and with good reason, because she is beginning to suspect that there are monsters in Chloe's smile and a hell in her head, and this path she is walking is straddling a cliff. But Chloe knows she could never imagine the truth. Max is the only good thing Chloe has in the world and she refuses to fuck this up. When Chloe falls, and she knows she is going to fall, because it isn't a questions of when her tumble from grace happens, it's a matter of whether or not she'll be alive when she hits the bottom. But Chloe will never, ever drag Max down. She has to stay way up above, where she belongs.

Chloe exhales softly, makes a noise that is less than reassuring, something guttural and intricately wounded, like an animal in its death throes. One of her eyes is swollen shut and she's lost feeling in her legs and this damn cut on her lip won't stop bleeding. And honestly she just wants out. Out of this town. Out of this world. Out of this life she has singlehandedly destroyed. It isn't getting better and all she wants is better. So what is she supposed to do? How is she supposed to fix this?

Max calls her name, a little frantic, a little nervous. It's so funny, Chloe thinks. How she doesn't know. She doesn't understand how much things have changed. How far Chloe has sunk. But it's not her fault. Chloe doesn't tell anyone anything anymore. It is better for her to compartmentalize her life. But, she is tired of this, this game she has created and cultivated, so she swallows her pride, and a mix of blood and dirt, and says, "I fucked up. I really fucked up."

///

One thing collides into the other, and somehow Chloe winds up in Max room with episodes of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air blasting on the laptop Max shoved to the side. Chloe is smoking, which she shouldn’t be, but it is quite astounding what one can get away with while injured. But, there's no booze and no drugs, so it's kind of shit still.

Max didn't entirely freak out, but she is pacing the room while Chloe assesses her wounds, shirt discarded. She takes the term self-help far too literally, but poking at the bruises is easier than thinking about why they were there in the first place.

"Who did this to you?" Max asks. "Was it-" she hesitates here, eyes wide, "Was it David?"

Chloe laughs, and it pushes and stabs at all the wounds on her chest, enough to make her forget for a moment. Is she even human, if she has completely restructured her functioning so her blood oxidizes destruction? "No. Not this time."

'This time' causes Max to stop. It's no secret that her step-demon hits her. Just like its no real secret that Chloe stole one of his guns to blow his brains out if he ever touched her again.(And she will, she tells herself at night, waiting for him to break down her door in a fit of anger). But no one really wants to hear about abuse, because it is ugly and it kills their illusion of a perfect world. Max crosses the room, stands in front of her and asks, "What’s going on, Chloe?"

Chloe looks away. She's tempted to press the glowing edge of her cigarette into her palm, just to stop all of the feeling she has threatening to spill over. It stops the pain and the sadness, and she is too sober to do this. But she puts a thumb against a bruise on her ribs instead and presses until there are stars on the edge of her vision. She hates how this is how she functions. "It’s kind of like this, it’s- you get into habits, right? Good habits or bad habits, they’re your habits. And they are safe. But I never learned anything good. No one told me how I was supposed to deal with things, so I don’t.” Chloe shakes her head. She has never been good with words. She is a feeler, not a talker. She shows her emotions and her thoughts, she doesn’t write them down and speak them aloud, because that makes them real. “What I’m trying to say is: sometimes you have a lot of pain, and you don’t have any control over whether or not you feel it. You just do. But you can control where and when the pain happens. Some pain makes other pains feel smaller. I don’t have a lot of control, but I have control over this.”

And then it’s like a dawn inside Max’s head. Suddenly everything must make sense to her. The drugs, the alcohol, the scars on Chloe’s wrist. And if there is one thing people don’t give Max nearly enough credit for, it’s her understanding. Even when she’s so off base it’s laughable, she gives the feeling that she understands exactly what you’ve been through. There’s something therapeutic in her, just as there was in Rachel. Rachel made things hurt less. She was there when things went to hell. And she understood that this wasn’t a quick fix, that things like this didn’t get cured, they got managed and better.  A kiss and a declaration of love don't suddenly fix this. That was what Chloe needed, a sense of understanding, of validation. It’s what she still needs. Not her step-dick telling her to suck it up and get over it, that everyone gets sad now and again.

Because this isn’t sadness. This is drowning, and being chained to the ocean floor. And Chloe never learned how to swim.

Max is hugging her, and Chloe’s face is bruised but she allows herself to be drawn against her stomach and encased in her arms. It’s been a long time, a long time that she has been close to someone in the way that she needs. She considers herself a social creature. Max makes her feel better, makes her feel more whole. Chloe hasn’t cried in years, and she isn’t about to start now. That opens doors she wants to remain closed. “I’m destroying myself,” Chloe says. “That’s what’s going on.”

"How do we stop this?"

"I don't know." It's the honest truth. Chloe may be prone to lying, but even she knows when it's time to lick your wounds and admit that this thing is killing her and she can't stop. "Don't let go."

///

It wasn't like Chloe imagined her life to be like this. No one imagines their life to be like this. It's getting harder and harder to laugh it off. She is not as resilient as she was in younger years. Even armor can be sundered when it has been through enough battles. She pretends that she is still bolstering her defenses and does not acknowledge that the enemy has already breached her walls. Damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. There is no easy way out of the town for her. There is no easy way for her to do anything.

And yeah, maybe the things she uses to make herself feel whole are the worst things she could be doing to herself. But it's her life and her soul on the line and humanity isn't know for making the best decisions, only the most convenient.

///

Chloe does not like to think about the passage of days, because that means it is counting down to Max’s exodus. And she will leave, there is no mistake about it, because her destiny is somewhere beyond this awful place, and she is not tied or stuck here, she can leave as she pleases. And Chloe tries not to resent her for that, the fact that she can afford to up and peace out. It’s not Max’s fault, it’s just the cards she was dealt. The dealer likes her better.

Chloe hasn’t talked about that night, the reason behind it, in a while. And Max has understood, that it’s hard. It’s hard to talk about. But she hasn’t shied away. So, this is why Chloe is currently sitting crosslegged on the ground in the junkyard with a few of Max’s friends, and friends of Max’s friends, somehow cajoled into a game of Never Have I Ever. Chloe tends to avoid this game, mostly because it is always her who ends up having done most of the things, and it’s no fun if she’s the only one drinking. Of course, Max isn’t taking shots. She opted for water, but, whatever. Someone has to keep sober, she supposes.

Chloe tries her best to avoid Max’s social circle, if only because she feels a little like a disease in a pristine hospital, out of place, too wrong. She does not want to taint Max’s experiences of Blackwell. But Max think a little socialization is good for her, and Chloe really wants to take her mind off. It’s been going on for a decent amount of time, starting innocent, with things like “Never have I ever faked being sick” or “Never have I ever put someone’s hand in water to see if they’ll pee”, but it is easy to see people are waiting to get down to the nitty gritty, personal things.

“Never have I ever,” begins a girl, Dana maybe, Chloe doesn’t really remember, “Kissed anyone in the group.”

Dana, her boyfriend, and a little less than a third of the group take a shot. Max runs her thumb across the rim of her drink. She hasn’t taken a lot of shots. Chloe already knows just about everything she has done. Still, there is always more to learn about someone you haven’t seen in years. Chloe herself is sinking into a pleasant state of drunkenness. The next person, some kid whose name Chloe didn’t give a fuck to remember, says, “Never have I ever wanted to have sex with someone in the group.”

This rouses quite a few laughs and a lot of drinks. Chloe is beyond the point of caring, rational thoughts and censorship. Her friendship is weird enough as it is, no secrets kept, so she raises her glass, never breaking eye contact with Max, and takes a shot. Max blushes, coughs, but maintains eye contact as she takes a drink. The group explodes with “Ohs” and “Oh my Gods.” Chloe grins and winks. At least it isn’t awkward anymore.

The game continues, and it’s all good, dirty and salacious fun, until some asshat says, “Never have I ever done any drugs,” and everyone is drinking and laughing and nudging each other but Chloe’s heart drops out of her chest as if cut free, and her face falls, the world dropping away. Max is looking at her funny, and Chloe realizes she is breathing heavy. She stand abruptly, excuses herself from the game and runs as far away as possible, from the chuckles and smiles. It’s all a joke to them. A stupid fucking joke. A little weed here, maybe some ecstasy there, anything to makes party entertaining. All fun and games because no one gets hurt. Chloe scrubs at her face, staring out into the darkness of the woods. It stares right back. God, get it together. Get it together. Why does she care so much? Why does this matter. "Motherfucker!"

"Chloe?" Max is behind her, cautious, curious and anxious. Chloe has lost her shit in front of her before, but she still doesn't know why.

Chloe turns and looks at her, a little blurred, in a pleasant sort of way. And yeah, Max has always been pretty but she has also cultivated this fragile sort of look that makes you want to tell her everything and, at the same time, shield her from the world. Chloe isn't sure what she wants to do, so she says, "You really do want in my pants,"

"So do you." Max is fast, banter quick and easy and freeing. The best way to disarm a situation that is getting too heavy.

"All you ever had to do was ask. No nudes for your wall though."

"Are you confessing?"

"To wanting to get laid? You bet your ass."

Max laughs at that, and the tension leaves Chloe shoulders. Her arms are open and Chloe all but falls into the hug. She really missed this, all those years. There is something to be said about childhood friends, a connection shared that cannot be made anywhere else. Everything is really fucked, but Max is here and happy, and Chloe won't change that for the world. Max smells like cheap soap and pine needles. She is small but steady beneath Chloe’s hands. But will she last? Chloe is the only person chained to this town and she wields the presence of a hurricane. Escaping is less like a road trip and more like a magic trick without any preparation.

Chloe pulls Max tighter, closer, but it’s not enough. She wants to pull their bones together, map out every last space inside her chest, the way every sigh blooms in her lungs and throat. She wants to remember every notch in her skeleton, every skip in her heart, every soft edge and every tendon and god- it all sounds so morbidly unhealthy, but Chloe doesn’t ever want to forget. She cannot even recreate a proper image of Rachel anymore and she loved that girl like the oxygen in her veins but she is gone and everyone forgets eventually. But not this time. Chloe will probably be dead long before the images have the chance to slip her mind, but she has always believed in contingency plans.

Chloe pulls back, looks at Max, with her wide doe-eyes and gentle smile and it’s just, “Would I be a terrible friend if I kissed you?”

She doesn’t even look shocked, just shrugs, bites her lip. She has heard weirder things right? But this isn’t weird. This is, well, kind of what Chloe expected things to end up like. "Is this the drink talking or Chloe?"

Chloe grins, if only to diffuse the situation and detract from the matter, God, she would make a good con man. "Both. Mostly Chloe. Like 78.43 percent Chloe. And you're looking very cute and kissable for the record."

Max's smile is faint. The hands resting on Chloe's lower back flex, fingers scrunching, bunching fabric. "Flatterer."

"I try. Anything for my girl."

Max looks at her, all timeless eyes and wide open face, waiting and watching for the first sign she needs to straighten her back and catch. Chloe can practically feel that girls heart reaching out, earnest and gentle as the purest soul. But she is in the wrong place and she is with with wrong person. "Are you alright though?"

Chloe almost laughs at that. "Of course not." And then the laughter dies in her chest, thunder stomped beneath the foot of God. In its place fills a hollowness, the kind she gets when she realizes she is ruining her life, but cannot turn herself around or step off the tightrope she is walking. The helplessness chokes her. Her hands trail up Max's arms, over her shoulders, threading themselves in her hair. Oh. Oh no. Chloe is playing a game she will lose every time. Betting her heart when she knows she won't see it again. But, the self destructive part of herself antes up, deaf to all warnings, and goes in for the kill.

///

It probably isn't the best idea to be hiding out in Max's room, partially because she hasn't been home in three days and stepprick is launching a not so rescue mission, and partially because half the people she so graciously ran from last night live in these dorms and she isn't about to look at them. But mostly G.I Joe, because if he catches her, Blackwell will become a murder scene.

Chloe figured it might have been awkward today, after making out with Max the other day. She's been thinking about it a lot, while Max has been at class. Chloe doesn't know if it meant anything. She can always brush it off as a one time drunken mess, dismiss it with a laugh and call it good. She has a really bad habit of kissing all her friends, sober or not. Except she isn't really sad about that, her friends are hot and she is hot and what is friendship for if not crossing the romo line every now and again.

Still, she took a few lines in the bathroom and is winding down the high in Max's bed, listening to her melancholy hipster shit and drowning out the demons that raise themselves when her heartbeat slows. Chloe draws her arms over her eyes. If she can't see it she can't feel it. If she can't see it she can't feel it. The during is what she craves. For all the nasty shit it does, if there's one thing coke doesn't get enough credit for, it's the during. When Chloe feels in control. Like she can become anyone or anything. Like the world is in her fingertips and there is no such thing as hate or pain or loss or, worse, what ifs. There is only her, her heart, and the greatest feeling in the world. Love can never die in the moments of infinity.

It's the after that nearly makes her quit every time.

When it all falls down, domino by wretched domino, skyscraper by supposedly immortal skyscraper. When she can feel her heart disconnect and fall through the mattress, through the floor, through everything and she has to build herself a new one out of whatever material she has nearby (which is never anything wholesome or at all what a heart should be fastened from).

The after, when she remembers. Remembers that Rachel is dead. Remembers that her mom is dead. Remembers that everyone she lets in dies. Remembers that she is chained to this town and the tide is rising fast.

Chloe tries to ignore the hollowness brewing inside her body. It's hard to focus on the song. Max's bed smells like lavender soap and it's lumpy as hell. Chloe wants to get out, but she's heard footsteps in the hallway, which means at least someone is back from classes, and she doesn't want people to think she's doing a walk of shame.

The emptiness in her chest is cavernous and ravenous and traveling through her bones and settling in her spine. It feels like her body is a vessel for the vacuum of space, held together by paper flesh. It's always like this. This feeling of nothingness that transforms her body into something incomprehensible and it hurts and it's terrifying, because she doesn't feel real. And what do you do when you don't exist?

Chloe has an answer. It's all over her wrists and thighs. Prove that she exists. Prove she is in control. Prove her pain is her own.

Chloe doesn't realize how thick her breathing has become until the last track on the CD stops and silence steals the room. She flattens a palm across her chest and her heart is devastating inside her ribs but it doesn't feel right and shit-

She's real. She's real. She's here. Or is she? Is she? Chloe sits up fast enough to see stars and paces the room, chest heaving, curling and uncurling her hands and how can she prove it? How can she prove it right this minute that this is reality? That this isn't all in her head? Chloe searches, fast, she's going to explode, but the isn't a single fucking thing here and she is losing her damn mind.

Chloe doesn't realize she is on the ground with her hands clawing at her shirt until she gradually becomes aware of Max's arms around her, head tucked into her neck. And, no, Chloe isn't crying but she is too fucking close and that is not okay. Slowly, her muscles uncoil, her inside fill, and she floats back down to earth. She can feel her heartbeat and the blood in her veins and her breathing and her knees on the cold floor and Max's warmth around her. This is bad. This is not something she can laugh off. It should be a wake up call. But it isn’t.

Chloe pulls back just far enough to see Max’s wide eyes. She feels exhausted, skin tingling, and yeah, this usually happens when she is alone, she doesn’t remember how she is supposed to break the ice, so she throws a rock and lets it drop, “Fancy meeting you here, Mad Max.” Her hands are shaking, palms sweaty.

Max blinks. She has a lot of freckles that are almost too faint to see. She looks worried. Scared out of her mind. Not the kind of worried you get when the bus is late or you forgot to turn in your homework. No, the bone deep kind of terror you get when nothing is alright, when the light at the end of your tunnel burns out, and they seal the exit with concrete. That kind. Like someone is pouring seawater into your lungs and you can’t stop them. “Chloe,” Max seems close to crying. “What’s going on?”

Chloe looks away. She knows how disappointing it must be, that for all her cool, disaffected loner look, she never got any better than who she was five years ago. She changed in all the ways she wasn’t supposed to. Instead of the kid your parents disapprove of, because they think you’re a bad influence, she is the kid your parents move whole states to get away from, because they’ve seen how this ends, and they know all you do is break hearts and lives, destined for a short and violent grave. And that isn’t who she wants to be. She has to unlearn all of her survival tactics. “I don’t know.” She attempts a laugh that sounds diseased in the silence. “No. I do, it’s just- hard. To explain.”

Her hands find Chloe’s, fingers freezing, but looking so damn earnest it’s not fair. “You know I’m here for you, right? Forever. No matter what you do or don’t tell me.”

“Well, now you’re going to make me cry.” Chloe is not used to such honest and untainted displays of solidarity, no strings attached. She has been on her own for a long time. Laying her burden at the door is a foreign concept to her. She is used to keeping her poisons inside where they belong.

Max smiles, a quiet little thing with a hidden power, radiant inside this little piece of atmosphere. “The great and mighty Chloe?”

“Not so great and mighty at the moment, honestly,” Chloe admits.

“Do you want to talk about it? Or, I can score some ice cream, we can chill for a bit.”

Chloe does not answer. She sits, gears turning. After a few minutes, Max starts to move away, but Chloe pulls her back. She supposes now is as good a time as any to break open her ribs and lay bare her secrets and veins. She has done it before. The second attempt is always easier. Soon her bones know how to bend and splinter like they should, how to scar in the necessary fashions. This healing thing, she is getting depressingly good at, almost as good as she is at the hurting part.

"I don't claim to understand what you're going through," Max says, and Chloe is grateful for the break in silence. "But I'm never leaving you."

How is that girl even real? How does Chloe manage to befriend the most selfless people? She can feel the tears welling up, blood in her throat, and she doesn't want to choke. She needs to breathe. So, she splits herself open, perhaps for the first time, hopefully for the last, and spills her stories like sea water.

///

Chloe doesn't remember who introduced her to her drug of choice. It doesn't matter. Sometimes she wants to kiss them. Sometimes she wants to rip their throat for doing this to her. But, no, that isn't the truth. She did this to herself. She took that first hit. She took that second. She turned out her pockets and sold every last piece of her for the next line. Blood is a valuable bargaining chip, Chloe learned. Irreplaceable, but oh so pretty in artificial lighting.

She does remember that it was somewhere dirty and dark. Someplace she should never have been, but thrived in none the less. By then, she had already learned to live without sunlight, to exist where most withered.

Chloe knew she was stepping through a door that would forever close behind her, leaving behind a youthful naivety the likes of which she would never touch again. That moment would change everything, as well as destroy any life she had built. The thought had scared her. The only thing that lay beyond the doorway was a slow, agonizing descent, the kind of fall from grace that one rarely survived, and if they did, their bones never set properly. She needed to be wary. She needed to give that serious though. She needed she needed she needed. She didn’t. Chloe stepped through the door. She heard it lock tight, felt the coldness of the other side. And she reveled in the perfect self-destruction of the person she used to be. It hurt in every way she dreamed it would and part of her wanted the pain to kill her right then and there, but it didn’t. She took the straw, she did the line. She forged herself with nicotine, drugs and a beautiful rage.

And

She fell

Fell

Fell

Chloe thinks she is starting to see the bottom.


End file.
